The Practice of Human Sacrifice On the BBC’s History site, Dr. Mike Parker-Pearson provides a brief overview of ritual human sacrifice and suggests it is still overtly in use among modern institutions today.

1739: Michael Blodorn “selvmordsmord” On Executed Today, the Hedsman writes about an 18th-century Danish man who was among the last people executed for having committed murder in order to be killed by the state, a loophole a number of pious suicidal people exploited over the centuries following the Reformation.

The Horrible Secrets of Operation Paperclip On History News Network, Aaron Leonard interviews historian Annie Jacobsen about the United States’ program to capture, recruit and overlook the war crimes of Nazi scientists in order to build a space program.

Telomerage reverses ageing process In Nature, Ewen Callaway writes about a surprising study that found that giving the enzyme telomerase to rats that lack telomeres, the effects of some age-related conditions were reversed.

The mental block On Aeon, Michael Hanlon provides an elementary, but dense, primer of the investigation into how consciousness arises, by fields as seemingly disparate as physics and philosophy.

Your point is? On Aeon, Steven Poole writes about the revival of a long-abandoned (and scorned) ancient philosophy, teleology, which purports that there is a purpose to all things and uses that position to explain everything from consciousness to the presence of acorns.

Mt Mihara On Atlas Obscura, contributors Eric Grundhauser and Rachel write about Japan’s number one suicide spot: an active volcano.